Avaa
Newbie
i know what he did.
i want to start with that because i need at least one thing in this whole situation to be clear — i am not stupid. i know exactly what happened and exactly how it happened and if you laid it out in front of me like a crime scene i could point to every single moment where i should have walked away.
i know.
i just. can't leave ffs.
and that's the part i'm trying to understand. that's why i'm writing this at 3am instead of sleeping like a normal person. i'm trying to figure out how someone can know they're in a trap and just. stay in it. and keep checking their phone. and feel their stomach drop every time the notification isn't him. and feel it drop even harder when it is. (replying in sec after being ignored into hours )
how does that happen to a person.
how did it happen to me.
kay from the beginning.
i joined chatzozo because i was bored and my self control has never been my strongest trait. the wall was doing its thing — loud, messy, everyone performing for nobody. i was lurking. minding my business. genuinely minding it.
and then there was this thread about him.
@HE — don't trust him. manipulator. cheater. monster honestly.
and he was just sitting in it going —
@HE: okay. sure.
@HE okay. sure.
over and over. not defending himself. just. absorbing it like weather.
something about that got me. i don't know what. maybe it was the fact that every man i'd ever met would've been defensive and loud and making it about themselves and he was just — quiet. tired. like someone who had decided the world could think whatever it wanted and he was done spending energy on it.
i messaged him.
i know. i KNOW. the signs were literally right there in flashing neon and i walked toward them like a moth who saw the light and thought wow pretty.
the first week was just talking.
good talking though. the kind that doesn't feel like talking, feels like — finally. like finally someone who doesn't need me to explain the punchline or water down the dark parts or pretend i'm less than i am so they feel comfortable.
he matched me. that's the thing. every energy i brought he matched it exactly. sharp — he was sharper. quiet — he went quieter. i pushed — he didn't move. i pulled back — he waited. perfectly. like he knew exactly how much rope to give so i'd use it to walk toward him instead of away.
which. yeah. in retrospect.
week two is where i lose the ability to be objective about this.
i'm just going to say it got intense and leave the details where they are which is burned into my memory at 3am apparently.
he made me feel like — okay you know that feeling when someone wants you so specifically that it feels personal? not just want in general, not just warm body energy, but like they've studied the exact map of you and they know where all the pressure points are?
that
he made me feel like that.
and i knew even then, somewhere small and quiet in the back of my brain, that knowing someone's pressure points that fast isn't intimacy.
it's research.
i ignored that thought for approximately week and counting so.
week three. :the call.
i think about this constantly. like my brain has this on rotation at all times, background app, always running.we were talking and his voice shifted — got quieter, more careful, the way it does when something real is about to come out — and he said
can i tell you something
yeah.
i'm afraid of this. of you. of whatever this is.
i asked why.
and he said — the obsession you have. i'm seeing myself in you. and it makes me tremble that i don't hurt you.
i just.....sat there.
because nobody had ever said that to me. nobody had ever looked at how completely i give myself to things and named it without making me feel insane for it. he didn't say too much or too intense or you need to calm down. he said i see you. he said it scares me. he said it in a voice that sounded so genuine that even now, even knowing what i know, i can't fully convince myself he was lying.
maybe he wasn't lying in that moment.
maybe that's the worst part.
i told him then don't hurt me.
he said i'm trying not to.
and i believed him. i believed him so completely that i stopped guarding the parts of myself i'd been guarding for years. just — put them down. right there on that call. like okay. okay i trust this. okay this is safe.
it wasn't safe.
and then week four happened. and nothing dramatic happened which is the thing i can't explain to people when they ask what he did. there's no clean answer. no receipts. no screenshot where he says something awful.
he just started giving me less.
not nothing. that's the thing — if it was nothing i could've left. i'm dramatic but i'm not a masochist. it was just. less. replies a little slower. energy a little cooler. conversations that used to go for hours suddenly ending at a place that felt unfinished, like a sentence with no period, like he got up mid-thought and just walked away and expected me to be fine sitting at the table alone.
and then just when i'd get quiet —
just when i'd start pulling back, start protecting myself, start building the wall back up brick by brick —
he'd come back.
not with anything big. never anything big. just a —
@HE: hey *sent a reel*
or a meme that was so specifically my sense of humor it felt like a message that said i still know you without saying it.
or he'd reply to something i posted on the wall with one word that somehow had the weight of a paragraph. and i'd just. crumble. every time. like all the walls i'd been building for days just — gone. in one notification. one word. one stupid meme.
and he knows. that's the thing i can't get past. he KNOWS he's doing this. he knows exactly what those breadcrumbs do to me because he TOLD me he saw himself in me. he knows the obsession. he knows how i work.
and he still does it.
and i still fall for it.
every. single. time.
it's 3am and i just checked his profile for the fourth time tonight.
@he is online.
he's online and he hasn't messaged me and i'm sitting here trying to decide if i should say something first and i already know i'm not going to because i have exactly that much self respect left and also i know if i message first he'll reply just enough to remind me he's still there and then go quiet again and i'll be worse than before.
i know the pattern.
i know it by heart at this point.
and i'm going to check his profile a fifth time in like twenty minutes anyway.
the thing that's really messing me up —
and i mean really, underneath all of it —
is thatfucked up sentence.
it makes me tremble that i don't hurt you.
he said that. he looked at me and saw what was coming and said it out loud. like a warning he knew i wouldn't hear. or maybe like a warning he needed to give himself. or maybe — and this is the version that keeps me up — maybe it wasn't a warning at all-- ffs why did i even fall or more been obsessed to this psychotic dummy .
maybe it was just him telling me the truth about himself and hoping it would be enough for me to save myself.
and i heard it as a love confession instead.
and he let me.
and here we are.
i'm obsessed with a boy who warned me about himself on week three and i said okay and handed him every single part of me anyway and now i'm checking his online status at 3am and writing about it in my notes app like that's going to fix something.
it's not going to fix something.
he's going to send me something tomorrow — maybe, probably, just enough — and my stomach is going to do that thing and i'm going to forget i wrote this entire thing tonight.
and then i'll write it again next week.
ffs i still see him online!!!
and the week after.
she didn't leave.
she never leaves.
he knows.
i want to start with that because i need at least one thing in this whole situation to be clear — i am not stupid. i know exactly what happened and exactly how it happened and if you laid it out in front of me like a crime scene i could point to every single moment where i should have walked away.
i know.
i just. can't leave ffs.
and that's the part i'm trying to understand. that's why i'm writing this at 3am instead of sleeping like a normal person. i'm trying to figure out how someone can know they're in a trap and just. stay in it. and keep checking their phone. and feel their stomach drop every time the notification isn't him. and feel it drop even harder when it is. (replying in sec after being ignored into hours )
how does that happen to a person.
how did it happen to me.
kay from the beginning.
i joined chatzozo because i was bored and my self control has never been my strongest trait. the wall was doing its thing — loud, messy, everyone performing for nobody. i was lurking. minding my business. genuinely minding it.
and then there was this thread about him.
@HE — don't trust him. manipulator. cheater. monster honestly.
and he was just sitting in it going —
@HE: okay. sure.
@HE okay. sure.
over and over. not defending himself. just. absorbing it like weather.
something about that got me. i don't know what. maybe it was the fact that every man i'd ever met would've been defensive and loud and making it about themselves and he was just — quiet. tired. like someone who had decided the world could think whatever it wanted and he was done spending energy on it.
i messaged him.
i know. i KNOW. the signs were literally right there in flashing neon and i walked toward them like a moth who saw the light and thought wow pretty.
the first week was just talking.
good talking though. the kind that doesn't feel like talking, feels like — finally. like finally someone who doesn't need me to explain the punchline or water down the dark parts or pretend i'm less than i am so they feel comfortable.
he matched me. that's the thing. every energy i brought he matched it exactly. sharp — he was sharper. quiet — he went quieter. i pushed — he didn't move. i pulled back — he waited. perfectly. like he knew exactly how much rope to give so i'd use it to walk toward him instead of away.
which. yeah. in retrospect.
week two is where i lose the ability to be objective about this.
i'm just going to say it got intense and leave the details where they are which is burned into my memory at 3am apparently.
he made me feel like — okay you know that feeling when someone wants you so specifically that it feels personal? not just want in general, not just warm body energy, but like they've studied the exact map of you and they know where all the pressure points are?
that
he made me feel like that.
and i knew even then, somewhere small and quiet in the back of my brain, that knowing someone's pressure points that fast isn't intimacy.
it's research.
i ignored that thought for approximately week and counting so.
week three. :the call.
i think about this constantly. like my brain has this on rotation at all times, background app, always running.we were talking and his voice shifted — got quieter, more careful, the way it does when something real is about to come out — and he said
can i tell you something
yeah.
i'm afraid of this. of you. of whatever this is.
i asked why.
and he said — the obsession you have. i'm seeing myself in you. and it makes me tremble that i don't hurt you.
i just.....sat there.
because nobody had ever said that to me. nobody had ever looked at how completely i give myself to things and named it without making me feel insane for it. he didn't say too much or too intense or you need to calm down. he said i see you. he said it scares me. he said it in a voice that sounded so genuine that even now, even knowing what i know, i can't fully convince myself he was lying.
maybe he wasn't lying in that moment.
maybe that's the worst part.
i told him then don't hurt me.
he said i'm trying not to.
and i believed him. i believed him so completely that i stopped guarding the parts of myself i'd been guarding for years. just — put them down. right there on that call. like okay. okay i trust this. okay this is safe.
it wasn't safe.
and then week four happened. and nothing dramatic happened which is the thing i can't explain to people when they ask what he did. there's no clean answer. no receipts. no screenshot where he says something awful.
he just started giving me less.
not nothing. that's the thing — if it was nothing i could've left. i'm dramatic but i'm not a masochist. it was just. less. replies a little slower. energy a little cooler. conversations that used to go for hours suddenly ending at a place that felt unfinished, like a sentence with no period, like he got up mid-thought and just walked away and expected me to be fine sitting at the table alone.
and then just when i'd get quiet —
just when i'd start pulling back, start protecting myself, start building the wall back up brick by brick —
he'd come back.
not with anything big. never anything big. just a —
@HE: hey *sent a reel*
or a meme that was so specifically my sense of humor it felt like a message that said i still know you without saying it.
or he'd reply to something i posted on the wall with one word that somehow had the weight of a paragraph. and i'd just. crumble. every time. like all the walls i'd been building for days just — gone. in one notification. one word. one stupid meme.
and he knows. that's the thing i can't get past. he KNOWS he's doing this. he knows exactly what those breadcrumbs do to me because he TOLD me he saw himself in me. he knows the obsession. he knows how i work.
and he still does it.
and i still fall for it.
every. single. time.
it's 3am and i just checked his profile for the fourth time tonight.
@he is online.
he's online and he hasn't messaged me and i'm sitting here trying to decide if i should say something first and i already know i'm not going to because i have exactly that much self respect left and also i know if i message first he'll reply just enough to remind me he's still there and then go quiet again and i'll be worse than before.
i know the pattern.
i know it by heart at this point.
and i'm going to check his profile a fifth time in like twenty minutes anyway.
the thing that's really messing me up —
and i mean really, underneath all of it —
is thatfucked up sentence.
it makes me tremble that i don't hurt you.
he said that. he looked at me and saw what was coming and said it out loud. like a warning he knew i wouldn't hear. or maybe like a warning he needed to give himself. or maybe — and this is the version that keeps me up — maybe it wasn't a warning at all-- ffs why did i even fall or more been obsessed to this psychotic dummy .
maybe it was just him telling me the truth about himself and hoping it would be enough for me to save myself.
and i heard it as a love confession instead.
and he let me.
and here we are.
i'm obsessed with a boy who warned me about himself on week three and i said okay and handed him every single part of me anyway and now i'm checking his online status at 3am and writing about it in my notes app like that's going to fix something.
it's not going to fix something.
he's going to send me something tomorrow — maybe, probably, just enough — and my stomach is going to do that thing and i'm going to forget i wrote this entire thing tonight.
and then i'll write it again next week.
ffs i still see him online!!!
and the week after.
she didn't leave.
she never leaves.
he knows.
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